


Pennyroyal Tea

by Basingstoke



Category: Smallville
Genre: Choose Your Own Ending, M/M, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-06-10
Updated: 2002-06-14
Packaged: 2017-10-03 16:11:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basingstoke/pseuds/Basingstoke





	1. The Beginning

The doctor ran the probe over the lump on Lex's abdomen. "You're sure this can't go to a real radiologist?" she asked. "This isn't exactly my specialty."

"I'm sure," Lex said, rapidly approaching the end of his patience. Hamilton caught his eye and shrugged.

Of course Lex couldn't go to a regular hospital. His father owned them all. He wouldn't put it past his father to arrange to give him a false diagnosis--and if Lex was actually ill, his father was the last person who ought to know.

So he'd had Hamilton call in a few debts, twist a few arms, and Hamilton came up with the facilities and this woman from his Metropolis U. days.

"You have a *lot* of scar tissue in here," she said. "Strange that none of it shows up on your skin--you must have been young."

"Get to the point, Bones," Hamilton said, before Lex could start snapping.

"I'm orienting myself," she said. "Intestine all looks pretty much the same. Okay, here we go...the tissue is stretching but not splitting, which is...oh my God."

"Let me see," Lex said.

"It's...okay, I've heard of this." She nodded to Hamilton and he turned the monitor so Lex could see it.

There was a clearly fetal shape there among the loops of his guts. He could see the enormous skull, the tiny folded limbs.

"Sometimes one twin absorbs the other in the womb," Bones said. "In that case, the absorbed twin can remain encapsulated inside the body. You wouldn't have any idea you'd ever had a twin until it caused a problem, as it is now."

"Can it be removed?" Lex asked, feeling sick.

"Absolutely. It seems to be attached to part of your intestine, but I can easily section that out."

"And you don't see any sign of cancer," Lex said in a carefully casual voice.

"No--I mean, apart from the elevated white blood cell count, but your chart says that's normal for you."

Tension melted out of him. "Take it out."

*

Hamilton looked into the incision curiously. He'd never seen a living person from the inside.

"You're in my light," Dr. McCoy said. "Make yourself useful or get out of my hair."

Hamilton snorted. "Dammit, Bones, I'm a geologist, not a doctor--"

"Geek," she said. "Get me a container. Right now. I've got it."

Hamilton grabbed a bowl from the instrument stand and held it for her as she removed a bloody mass of tissue from Lex's belly. "Okay. Stitching him up now. I hate this--couldn't you at least have strong-armed me an assistant?"

"Just do your thing, Bones." Hamilton set the bowl down and prodded at the mass with a scalpel, wondering what in the hell this thing actually *looked* like.

It prodded back.

Hamilton froze.

It squirmed, and Hamilton could see a tiny foot emerge from the stretched-out tube of intestine.

Hamilton sliced open the intestine and saw a living fetus.

"Sloppy as hell," Bones grumbled behind him, "though he's got so many scars in here I'm amazed he can walk. It's like someone took a jackhammer to him. What's this guy into, anyway? Demolition derbies?"

Hamilton didn't answer. He touched the fetus with the blunt end of the scalpel and it pushed back--*hard*.

He set another bowl over the top of it and squirreled it away in the warmest place he could find.

*

Six hours later, Lex was recovering from surgery in the care of his servants and the fetus still hadn't died. Hamilton couldn't *imagine* why it hadn't died.

He tipped it into a large jar, heated and filled with solution of soy and beef protein. He was guessing. But he hadn't seen it breathe, and...it was worth a shot. He'd looked up development and the fetus was about four months along.

The fetus moved its arms and legs. Swimming. Something.

Four months along if it were human.

Hamilton glanced at a society page picture of Lex and his "good friend" Clark Kent. Good enough friend for Lex to follow him back to Metropolis when Kent went to Metropolis University.

Good enough friend for Roger Nixon to disappear after looking into Kent's life a little too vigorously.

Good enough friend to plant *that* in Lex's belly, Hamilton bet, and obviously he needed to keep this quiet. Very quiet.

He hid the glass womb in the same hiding hole as the surviving Nicodemus flower.

*

Lex stood at the window with a cup of chamomile tea. He rubbed his belly. He ached, but the incision was already sealed over and would heal by morning.

"Hey, Lex!" Clark tossed his backpack into a chair and crossed the room to wrap his arms around Lex from behind. "Are you okay? You look kind of pale."

Lex leaned back into Clark and kissed his cheek. "Long day, but--I'm fine. I'm perfectly fine."

*  
=


	2. Option One

Hamilton held out his hands. "Now--let me explain."

"Kill it," Lex said.

"Wait--"

"Kill. It. Now." Lex's hands clenched; he was nauseous. This--*thing* inside him--a parasite, feeding off him--

"This is a hell of a discovery!"

"Kill it or we're through." He couldn't let it--grow. God only knew what it would turn out to be.

"Damn it, Lex!"

Lex picked up a meteor rock and threw it at the man. "You know how. Do it."

Hamilton closed his eyes and sagged, just a little; just enough to let Lex know he'd given in.

Lex left thinking of shower, tubs, pools. A swim. A long soak in the Jacuzzi with the heat turned all the way up. If he boiled, he'd heal.

*


	3. Option Two

"I really do dislike surprises, Dr Hamilton," Lex said, reaching the limits of his tolerance.

"Look, we're here already. This is something you really have to see for yourself." Hamilton opened the door to a small, comfortable apartment. Sitting in the living room were a young woman and a baby.

"Hey, Steven," the girl said.

"Hi, Kayla. We're just visiting--did you name him?" Hamilton took the baby from the girl and handed it to Lex.

"Um, no. You didn't tell me a name, so I've just been calling him Sunshine." She shrugged.

"Well, whatever. Lex, little No-Name here is a very special baby."

Lex held the baby at arm's length, giving Hamilton a skeptical look, then cradled the baby against his shoulder. The baby waved his hands around cheerfully before grabbing for Lex's nose.

The baby caught Lex's nose and squeezed--squeezed hard enough that Lex felt cartilage crunch and saw blood spill over the boy's fat hand.

"Oh! my God," Kayla gasped, and swooped in to grab the boy. "Sunshine, that's a *bad baby*!"

Lex held his handkerchief to his nose and waved Hamilton into the bedroom. "Let me guess. You found the baby in Smallville," he said as his nose knit itself back together.

"No. I found him inside you."

Lex took a deep breath. He let it out. "Dr Hamilton--"

"When you had that--tumor--removed about a year ago? That's what it actually was."

"Jesus. Fucking. Christ."

"I--rescued it."

"You're a fucking ghoul," Lex breathed before he could collect himself.

"I'm a scientist! That kid is a major discovery!"

Lex breathed in, breathed out--calm, peace, he couldn't strangle the man, no matter how much he wanted to. That child was--another Clark?--and he realized the most important thing. "That's my son."

"...Sort of."

"Clark's and mine."

"I have some theories about that."

"Julian," Lex said, "his name is Julian," and he would keep the child, protect him, raise him up and keep him safe.

*


	4. Option Three

One day Hamilton looked into his safe and found that the fetus had turned into a flower. A Nicodemus flower, to be exact.

He decided that he needed a closer look and removed the jar from the safe. He set it on the table in his lab and went looking for the key that opened it.

When he returned with the key, the flower had turned back into a baby. It stared at him through the glass with its enormous brown eyes.

Last time he'd looked at it, its eyes were still closed, and it was pink as the bubble gum his students had spit all over campus. This time it was a little darker, he thought, and definitely more finished. Definitely awake.

The baby squirmed, banging his foot against the glass. Starburst cracks sizzled along the face of the jar. The baby kicked again and the cracks bowed outward.

"Oh, crap--" Hamilton put out his hands in barely enough time to catch the baby as the glass gave way.

The baby coughed once, spitting out the fluids of the jar, then howled.

Hamilton held him at arm's length. "Welcome to the planet, junior," he said.

A baby.

Well, the first thing he would need was a blanket...

And a new place to crash, one that Lex didn't have the key to.

*


End file.
